Research and Teaching Reading to Disadvantaged Learners: Implications for Further Research and Practice.

Cohen, S. Alan

Research on the teaching of reading to disadvantaged children often places too much emphasis on etiology rather than on pedagogy. The student's behavior, not the etiology, is the key to change. Suggestions that disadvantaged children have initial reading problems because of auditory, vocabulary, and visual discrimination deficits or articulatory problems are questionable because early reading vocabulary is quite limited, and existing discrimination problems are quickly alleviated by thorough sequential instructions. Also, research evidence indicates that slow learners are often concrete, motoric learners. Apparently average and above average disadvantaged children do not display this type of learning. Teachers have a major influence on the student's success in reading. Therefore, in addition to pedagogical treatments, the specific operants that discriminate good from mediocre and poor teachers must be isolated. Specific student behavioral deficits and strengths in reading when matched to teacher characteristics can produce a new concept in pedagogy. (BS)